Is this site safe? Will my personal information be kept private?

Yes, Oh My Japan is safe. We always use SSL encryption, the same security that banks use to keep your financial data secure.

Regarding personal information, we will keep your email address and password private. Because Oh My Japan is a site for meeting people, the rest of the information and photos that you post on OMJ will be visible to all members. For this reason, please only add information and photos that you wish to share.

What makes your site different from Facebook and Mixi?

Facebook and Mixi (Japan) are both social networks for keeping in touch with your existing friends. However, they are not designed to help meet new people.

Oh My Japan was made to help members who have never met to safely make lasting connections.

On Facebook, it is difficult to find people who are interested in Japan, and Japanese people who are interested in English. By contrast, while Mixi focuses on Japan, Mixi has no English language interface and requires a Japanese cell phone to sign up.

On the other hand, Oh My Japan aims to connect the English-speaking world with Japan, and all OMJ site features can be used in both the English and Japanese languages.

Is Oh My Japan a dating site?

If you are looking for a date, yes. If you don't want romance, no.

When you join Oh My Japan, you are asked to select your goals. If you choose "romance" as one of your goals, the dating features will be activated. If you do not choose "romance", then your profile will not appear in romance search results and you will not see any dating options.

Many single people use Oh My Japan to successfully find dates, while many married people successfully use Oh My Japan to make friends and find language exchange partners. Our goals-based system makes this possible.

Why can free members only start conversations with two new people per week?

Many websites are flooded with messages like "Hi" and "How are you?" While there is nothing inherently bad with such messages, receiving too many of them is tiresome. People want a real conversation, not "What's up?"

To help ensure members actually read other members' profiles before sending messages, we limit free members to sending messages to two new people per week. However, free members are still allowed to reply to any messages they receive; our goal is not to limit the amount of conversation, but rather to increase the quality of conversation.

What are the benefits of a paid membership?

Can I get a refund?

When you register, you can use basically all of the features of the site for free. This allows you to try the service before you buy.

For this reason, we do not offer refunds once you have chosen to upgrade your membership. We will not accept refund requests for reasons such as "I am not satisfied"; please use a free membership to see whether you like the site before you upgrade.

How does Oh My Japan make money?

Oh My Japan makes money from selling paid memberships.

Oh My Japan was inspired by Craigslist, one of the ten most visited sites in the US. Craigslist provides local classified advertisements to communities all over the United States, but they charge only for real estate listings. By keeping the number of employees small and using a simple design, they offer most users service for free while still making enough money to support the company. This is the kind of community-oriented business that the Internet makes possible and which Oh My Japan aspires to become.

The age or zodiac sign shown in my profile is incorrect. What can I do?

Oh My Japan automatically calculates your age and zodiac signs (both Chinese and Western) based on the birthday that you entered when registering your account. To prevent minors from using the site, members are not allowed to edit their birthdays.

Where can I get support?

How can I close my account?

We're sorry to see you go. First, if there's anything we can do to help you, please let us know why you are leaving the site and we will do our best to fix any problems that you are experiencing if we can.

If you have stopped looking for romance, students, or language exchange, you can uncheck the appropriate interests in your profile without disabling your account. This way, you can clearly let all Oh My Japan members know that you are no longer looking for romance, students, etc. without leaving Oh My Japan.

How can I re-activate my account that I closed?

There is no way to automatically re-open a closed account. Instead of closing your account, we recommend that members go to the "Edit Account Preferences" page and uncheck the interests that they are no longer interested in (romance, students, language exchange, etc.)

If you closed your account and wish to re-activate it, please contact us.